From socially conscious film-making to challenging the invisibility of women in the industry, pioneering Zimbabwean filmmaker and writer Tsitsi Dangarembga speaks with Beti Ellerson about her film activism.

The fourth annual Global Shift Festival is coming to Point Park University, September 18 – 21. The festival will consist of four days of films, panels, workshops, selected shorts, and special events, all curated around the theme of “The Future Starts Now.”

Does Iranian or Middle Eastern heritage mean ‘terrorist’? Yaghoub Yadali examines prejudice and takes a close look at the short film “Brain of Terror,” in which the Iranian-American actress Kathreen Khavari plays 11 characters who are trying determine whether or not they’re terrorists.

Satellite dishes, bootleg VHS tapes, uncensored films, police searches, laughter, and fear. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has imposed and removed bans on just about everything – soon such actions, says the new minister of Islamic Culture and Guidance says, will make everyone laugh.

From Academy Award-nominated director Richard E. Robbins comes Girl Rising – an innovative new feature film about the power of education to change a girl – and the world. Each girl is paired with a renowned writer from her native country who tell the girls’ stories with profound resonance.

Earlier this year a popular new entertainment business cropped up in Havana: 3D movies. Cuba columnist Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo looks at the privately-owned “movie theaters” – rooms in private residences – which have recently come under the scrutiny of the Cuban government.

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About Sampsonia Way

Sampsonia Way is an online magazine sponsored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh that seeks to protect and advocate for writers who may be endangered, to educate the public about threats to writers and literary expression, and to create a community in which endangered writers thrive and literary culture is a valued part of life.